O horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

The newspaper Dagens Nyheter revealed Monday that the Swedish police have established a register of Roma people. More than 4,000 Roma are said to be listed in the database, which according to constitutional experts breaks several Swedish laws. Justice Minister Beatrice Ask said she was “shocked” by the revelations.

The Commission on Security and Integrity Protection, which supervises the surveillance methods of the police, has launched an investigation.

In all, 4,029 people from around Sweden are listed in the database. Over 1,000 of them are children. Many of those registered are not suspected of committing any crime.

The registry, marked “travelers”, reportedly sits in a folder in the computer system of the Skåne police in southern Sweden.
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There were strong reactions from within Sweden’s Roma community on Monday. Fred Taikon, publisher of the É Romani Glinda magazine, told news agency TT that he was dumbfounded after hearing the news:

“This is a terrible, unlawful action that the police are committing. It is forbidden to register people based on their ethnicity – and that is exactly what the authorities are doing.”

Hans Caldaras, an artist and author of Roma origin, told Swedish Television News … that the registry brings to mind the early 1940s, when Swedish police, acting in response to the Nazis, mapped Roma and Jews living in Sweden.

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